“As the Queen knelt in thanksgiving,” he said clearly and in a low-pitched, carrying tone, “her babe leaped in her womb…”
Elizabeth stared at him.
“Oh no! Oh God, no!”
“Word has spread through London — and now the people shout it in the streets. The bells—have caught it up, and all the town proclaims the news: Queen Mary is with child.”
“I knew it!” Elizabeth whispered, a hoarse, choking whisper. “I knew it!”
Cecil stood up.
“That is not all.” He spoke very rapidly but very clearly and deliberately, as a man speaks who has thought out every word he is uttering. “Philip has asked for you. … You will be sent to Whitehall. …”
Cecil drew out a handkerchief and touched his domed forehead and bearded lips. He was speaking, Elizabeth perceived, under deep stress and urgency. She laid a hand on his arm and gave it a quick pressure.
( 246 )
“I would to God you could be kept out of the Queen’s sight—here — anywhere but with the Queen,” Cecil went on.
“If Philip show you favor, I know not how it will twist in her brain. God alone knows what she may do.”
“I am not afraid,” Elizabeth said steadily.
Cecil took her hands in his.
“Your friends cannot follow you there in her sight. To love you, they must love you now in secret.
“You are alone, Elizabeth.”
She withdrew her hands, and smiled at him with shining eyes.
“Then get you gone at once, Cecil, and keep you safe for me.”
He knelt.
“That is my purpose — and—may others do the same!”
“Cecil, I thank you,” Elizabeth said, moved, and incredibly gentle.
“Thank me not for this news,” Cecil said unwillingly, rising from the stone floor.
“For your bringing it to me, then,” she smiled.
“God bless you then,” Cecil said quietly.
“And may God keep you for us.”
He was gone, as he had come, like a shadow.
A minute or more passed before Dudley came from the inner room.
“Robert, you heard?”
“I heard,” he said gravely. “And I thank God—”
Elizabeth threw out her hands to him, and he laid his lips to them.
“Oh Rob-Rob-pray for me!” she besought him.
And for the first time, now, in this hour of her coming freedom, he heard her sob.
he bells that rang in England then were bells that sounded for the only happiness Queen Mary had ever known since the brief days when Henry looked on her as his “little princess”—and loved her. For once again she had found
love.
The Church, the Emperor, and Spain—these were her first concern, true. But when Philip set foot on England's shore, she found what it meant to love a man. He was a handsome Prince, his manner, graces, courtliness were things to win her heart first, and then as her passion grew, her whole mind and soul.
He brought warmth, and sunshine, and laughter, and happiness — and she, poor girl, thought these things were brought to herself. The fact that Philip was merely carrying out his father's wishes in cementing an important international relationship dropped out of her comprehension. One thing and one thing only held her attention. This man was her husband —he was her Prince—he was to share her throne. He would be crowned King of England. Together, they would save England from heresy. God had smiled on her, and the miracle that had brought her to the throne in spite of the Northumberland plot, was to be fulfilled. From Philip, through her, would come the heir to the throne that would mean her own life everlasting here on earth. It was a prospect that set her in a heaven from which she could see nothing else.
She didn’t see the concealed smiles of the Spanish gentlemen in Philip’s train. She didn’t hear their raw and unkind jokes, passed in whispers behind courtly hands. “A flabby woman,” they said, “older than she had given out to be — and dressed badly.”
They knew well the warmth and ardor of the man, ten years her junior, who had come to be her husband. “Surely,” said one of them, “no greater task has ever been set a man before.”
Philip himself had not expected her to be the simple, dumpy little creature she was. This he might have borne with gentlemanly generosity had she been able to hold herself off from him, in a manner more becoming a partner in a mere state marriage. He had not counted on being saddled with a woman so madly in love she could leave him alone no hour of day or night, but must interrupt his private hours constantly with messengers bearing gifts, letters—love tokens—till he was sickened with it and longed only for the freedom of his own life in his own country.
Furthermore, it was cold. Though England can be heaven itself, with flowers and spring, it seemed as though she turned the elements apart to find the worst of fogs and snows and rains for this poor Spaniard. His first ride to Winchester, for
the formal wedding, was through a rain that soaked the velvet sleeves, the embroidered jerkin, the fine hose and boots, and made the plumes on his hat a sorry sight. They were a bedraggled, soaked and miserable party, this Prince and his train, when they arrived for the great ceremonies. A change of clothes could do little to raise their spirits in view of the eternal cold, the unfamiliar fogs and, above all, the absence of the sun!
And when their courtly gallantries were looked upon as affectation, so much so that they themselves fell into disfavor, they took refuge in sneers and jibes at all things English. Despite Mary’s own passion, the union was too damp, too dreary a comedy to be played through to any happy ending.
Elizabeth, had she had her own way, would have kept to the country—even at Woodstock, though that place was as much of a prison for her as the Tower had been. Far more would she have liked to stay at Hatfield. But because Philip would not have it so, Mary would not either. Elizabeth must, despite her fears, remain there at Whitehall, in all the perilous currents that were twisting through this marriage of Mary’s.
For a while it was not hard. For a while Mary knew such happiness that she could afford to be kind, and let her natural generosity come to the fore. She had her Philip. Best of all, she was, to the sincerest belief of her heart, fulfilling herself for England. She was going to bear Philip’s son to be the King of England.
The best that can be said for Philip is that he tried, gallantly, bravely and dutifully to play the loving husband. But Mary was too much for him. Elizabeth herself was far more ro his taste. What he had heard of her made him believe so. The brief time he had with her when Mary at last listened to his requests and allowed Elizabeth to be presented to him con-tirmed the belief.
But Elizabeth knew Mary. She locked her own charm up behind demure, retiring ways. If her brilliance sparkled through at times, she held it in leash, and kept herself in retirement as much as possible. Philip had no chance to be a part in fashioning another trap.
Those first days of Mary’s “pregnancy” were happy ones. Mary herself was radiant. England too looked forward to the birth of a Prince (so long as Philip himself remained consort, never to be formally crowned King—that they would not tolerate). And Philip—believing that the child would be born-felt a certain relief in that his actual mission in England had been accomplished.
But the months went on. The evidence of Mary’s condition seemed nonexistent. Still, her physicians swore to the truth of that condition, and England watched, and waited; and Philip watched, and waited — and drew his own conclusions; and Mary’s fears stirred, and grew. The more she stifled them, the more they spread like poison through her brain. From a fond, silly woman, she became to Philip a panic-stricken and unbalanced one. How many secret letters went from him to his father, the Emperor Charles, begging for release, no one will ever know.
At last, to everyone but Mary herself, the truth was apparent. There was no child. Her pregnancy was a figment of her driving desire to bear a Prince, and of her now unbalanced